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| In other words, every one of us is responsible for preventing child sexual abuse; We are called to be protectors of ALL children and help keep kids safe. |
The Goal of the Training:
Jim Walker was our facilitator. Jim is a School Teacher and animated trainer. Jim explained that the goal of this training is to help churches and religious organizations refine their roles as child safe environments while empowering the child-serving staff and volunteers, adults and parents with new tools to help them protect children. The aim is to STOP this child sexual abuse from happening. Bishop Aymond stated in one of the training videos, that the main solution to ending childhood sexual abuse is education. Ideally, the Catholic Church wants to see our education in the church become so open about child sexual abuse that every one of the adults is a protector of children in the church and spends time in training and orientation to talk about ways to end child sexual abuse.
Another reason for this training is to insure that every volunteer has gone through this training, because many times child molesters are the very folks who seek out these volunteer positions in churches, schools, youth groups, etc. but somehow divert these trainings and jump through the hoops to avoid the training. The more we can train every single child-serving volunteer or employee, the more we can raise the profile on these offenders.This training was field tested, meaning that if we follow the steps laid out in the curriculum with vigilance and fidelity, it has been shown to work. With each case study conducted, the researchers found that not ONE of these abuses would have occurred IF these 5 steps were in place:
The training started with a prayer and attendees watched two videos; one was focused on the effects on children who were molested and abused. The second video focused on solutions.
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One of the children’s stories talked about how the priest told her that he was ‘helping her’. The trust that the parents had in the priest and then the agony of finding out she was molested by this priest was devastating to the whole family, especially their daughter. |
The Stories of Abuse, Spoken by the Child Victims…
We heard story after story of the abuse; children spoke of the unbearable pain, wanting to kill themselves, losing all hope. One 10 year old said, “I’ve never been the same since then (the abuse).” One child said, “I don’t blame my parents much anymore.”
Grooming…
There is this dynamic that the abuser practices and it is called “Grooming”. Grooming is like a courtship relationship; it is a step by step, gradual process. The more the grooming is allowed to succeed, the closer the perpetrator gets toward abusing his victim. There is physical, psychological and community grooming that is intentionally implemented. The key is to interrupt the grooming process through the 5 steps listed above.
To understand the grooming process, you need to first understand the perpetrator. These are the folks who choose volunteer activities to gain access to kids. They’ll dedicate huge amounts of time to child-serving organizations and often they get rewarded for their service and are recognized as leaders for their work. Molesters see the world differently; they don’t believe that the rules of society apply to them. They use kids to get what they want and will even use their own kids to get to other kids. Child molesters have genuine skills in relating to children and they rationalize away the pain they are causing. The molesters who spoke on these videos were keenly aware of the power-control relationship they had over the children and how they used this power and control to enable children to trust them and then to feel complicit or that they chose the sexual activity, making them feel they were ultimately responsible for the abuse. There are 3 kinds of perpetrators: 1) those who are attracted to children; 2) situational offenders or those who abused under influence of alcohol or drugs, depression, etc. or 3) those abusers who are indiscriminate where anyone is a target (these offenders do not respond to any kind of therapy).
The Perpetrator’s Words about Grooming…
The video started with the perpetrator stating that in his lifetime he fondled over 500 children. The next abuser was abusing for over 25 years until he was caught.
The perpetrators talked calmly about how they ‘groomed’ their victim, the victim’s parents and their community. They said that they were always trying to connect with the kids as a ‘buddy’ and create a relationship that was peer-like. Then the kids weren’t scared of him and didn’t really see him as an adult (AKA: psychological grooming). Some of these offenders would have the children sit on their laps, tickle or wrestle with them or, in some cases, stay overnight at their homes (AKA: physical grooming). Another abuser talked about encouraging high grades and skill development as a way to gain the trust of the parents and the student (AKA: community grooming). As a teacher, he relied heavily on the adults not to monitor or supervise the time he had alone with their children; he would work with these kids after school and take them on field trips where he then abused the children.
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FACT: 5%-10% of adult men and 20% of adult women have been molested. These victims are more likely to have physical ailments and struggle with drug and alcohol abuse.
FACT: Most child sexual abuse perpetrators are men. Depending on the age and gender of the victim, this changes a little bit, but 60%-70% of perpetrators are men. About 10%–20% of the perpetrators are female. The remaining percentage is a male-female team.
FACT: Childhood sexual abuse happens in all racial, demographic, and economic status.
MYTH: Most children lie about the abuse.
MYTH: Priests abuse because of the vow of celibacy. |
Why Don’t Children Tell?
The victims struggle daily with the trauma of abuse throughout their childhood and adulthood. As one child victim stated, “I’m a kid, but I’m different from other kids. Every day, I have suffered.” As adults, the victims talked about how the abuse affects every aspect of their lives; their family’s lives, their ability to cope, their ability to hold down a job; and their ability to maintain emotional and psychological stability.
Many of the children felt like they knew the relationship with their abuser wasn’t right, but because these people were supposed to be trusted adults, they questioned themselves. Many times, the children blamed themselves and now as adults, they know it wasn’t their fault, but the abuse is so damaging to their ability to trust in adults AND to trust in themselves, that they continue to question.
There are many reasons children don’t speak of the abuse. They don’t tell because they’re afraid they won’t be believed; they don’t want to relive it; they were manipulated not to tell; they were embarrassed; they were surprised that their family didn’t figure it out on their own and wondered if maybe they won’t even care; or they’re ashamed; they’re afraid of the abuser and how the abuser may harm or disgrace them and their family; they’re afraid of how their parent(s) may harm the abuser, thus getting themselves in trouble with the law; they may be in denial; they’re confused about the relationship (i.e. they love the perpetrator, yet know they shouldn’t love them) and by telling, they could lose that person in their lives; they may have been tricked into using alcohol, drugs, or pornography so they feel guilty and that the abuse was their fault; or they just simply have no one to tell. The truth is, the more vulnerable a child is the more likely they could be a victim of abuse.
What Can We Do?...
One parent of a victim of the sexual abuse said… “You can do something; you don’t have to go through what my family has gone through.” The fact is that if parents and adults could spot one warning sign and take action, this abuse would have never happened.
KNOW THE WARNING SIGNS:
Keep your eyes open for suspicious and inappropriate behavior. When it comes to an adult touching a child, think of the acronym P.A.N. which stands for Public, Appropriate and Non-Sexual touch. You may notice an adult who always wants to be around kids, but more excited about the kids than other adults. Child Molesters often give their victims gifts. If someone is overly attentive to your child, both physically (i.e. wrestling or tickling children even if they don’t know them very well) or showering them with attention and gifts, that’s a time to watch the children. One victim said that as a student, she was alone with this teacher/abuser often and there was a lot of physical touching. She still asks, “Why wasn’t anyone there?” “Why wasn’t anyone watching what was going on?” “Why weren’t they listening to me?”
CONTROL WHO HAS ACCESS TO YOUR CHILDREN:
Sex offenders have to have time alone with the child to abuse them; so don’t leave children alone or unsupervised! When we take control as to who has access to our children, we make a protective wall between them and the perpetrator. Adults have to know where children are at all times AND to be aware of secluded areas where a child could be taken alone. Those areas have to be made off limits.
MONITOR the PROGRAM:
At any child-serving organization, parents should be able to walk in and check on classes/events at any time. Parents need to develop a very healthy suspicion about every program their children are involved in. They should never take anything for granted.
Every program should go through an approval process to guarantee that there are enough adults present at all times to carefully monitor programs. Some adults should be kept as far away as possible from children. All volunteers and employees need to complete a written/standardized application. The church has to know about every person these children are in contact with. Criminal background checks should be standard operating procedure and face-to-face interviews AND reference checks should be conducted. Checking volunteers and employee’s past history with children is critical to maintaining a safe environment for children.
BE AWARE OF WHAT IS GOING ON IN THE LIVES OF YOUR CHILDREN
The more you talk with your children and really listen to them, the better you know them and the more they know they can tell you anything.
Talk to your children, listen to your children, observe your children, monitor and drop in on your child during visits with others, make sure they know the touching rules, discuss scenarios with them to help prepare them to protect themselves.
Children need to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they will be believed by their parents. Patient and nonjudgmental listening will usually allow the story to come out. Children don’t always say exactly what they mean… sometimes what they aren’t saying or showing in their behavior says more. Sometimes they get moody, aggressive, their grades drop or they stop caring about personal hygiene; these are all signs that something is wrong. Let your child know that you will listen to them, you won’t blame them and you will keep them safe. Talk with your child about this often; just like other safety rules. For instance, children need to know about their body parts and that their bodies are special. They need to know that their body parts are covered for a reason and that only a few adults are allowed to see those private body parts; but if another adult wants to touch them or see these body parts, they should say NO, no matter what that adult says.
COMMUNICATE YOUR CONCERNS TO ADULTS AND CHILDREN
One perpetrator was a coach. He would take pictures of his students and put them in a picture album as a tool to entice children to want to have their picture taken. One parent who asked for the negatives of these pictures and said she didn’t want her son’s picture in the book led to an investigation and this perpetrator got caught and hasn’t been able to abuse children since. Pay attention to your own feelings; if something doesn’t seem right, express your concern or observation. Talk to the person involved or speak to their supervisor. One suggestion was to say to the adult you have suspicions about, “I have seen you touching my child a lot, can you see how what you’re doing would be construed as the behavior of a child sexual abuser and if I didn’t say something, I would be making it easier for a child sexual abuser to gain access to my child and all our children?” In far too many cases of abuse, adults noticed things but didn’t say anything until it was too late.
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This training was long overdue. Child sexual abuse exists, and we must do our utmost to bring an end to the abuse and make the world a safer place for all of our children. Child sexual abuse happens in the places we least expect it; and with trusted adults who work in child care centers, schools, youth camps and churches. These offenders are camp counselors, volunteers like Santa Claus, youth ministers, priests, coaches, grandparents and teachers, etc. As Catholics, we have a sacred obligation to love and protect all of God’s children and as the Catholic Church we own a special responsibility for the fact that we have been way behind the curve in this training and how we have thus, recycled these abusers back into the church.
One of the participants in the training talked about setting a goal for SJA. Jim, our trainer, commented that the goal is for SJA to never have even ONE case of child sexual abuse in our congregation. To do that, I think we need to broaden the training to all SJA parishioners, because we are all responsible for ending child sexual abuse.
For more information about this training, see the Virtus website at: www.virtusonline.org. If you missed this training, SJA has a make-up date of Jan 20th @ 8:30 am in Hospitality Hall. Please register online @ virtus.org for this session or other sessions at churches near you.